Hurt Locker studio asks indie ISP to cough up users’ IP addresses

Legal onslaught against P2P users heads north of the border.

One of Canada’s most well-known independent ISPs, TekSavvy, announced Monday that it had received a request on behalf of an American film studio for subscriber information on “a couple thousand” of its users.

Voltage Pictures LLC believes that thousands of TekSavvy subscribers (and likely many more at the larger ISPs in the Great White North) have downloaded unauthorized copies of a number of its films, including The Whistleblower, Balls to the Wall, and Fire with Fire, among others.

If this film studio’s tactics sound familiar, it's because we’ve been covering them for years. Back in 2010, Voltage targeted tens of thousands of Americans for allegedly downloading copies of The Hurt Locker, expanding its efforts to Canada the following year. One major problem: an IP address does not always tie back to an actual person. By early 2011, Voltage's cases were largely dropped, at least here in the United States. But it looks like Voltage isn’t done with its legal wrangling, at least in Canada. (The studio did not immediately respond to Ars' request for comment.)

According to court documents, Voltage hired a Canadian digital forensics company, Canipre, to monitor traffic on BitTorrent between September 1 and October 30, 2012, looking for the studio’s films.

“In simple terms, the distributors are facilitating the flagrant theft of the works by others, on an international scale,” Voltage claims in the December 7 court filing (PDF), announcing its intention to bring a legal motion in a Toronto courtroom on December 17, 2012.

Standing firm

TekSavvy says it’s standing up to the lawsuit and says while it has sent out notices to affected users, it has not “provided any information to Voltage" and would only do so under a court order.

“The sheer volume of copyright infringement claims that Voltage is pursuing against individuals at one time is what’s different in this case,” the company’s CEO, Marc Gaudrault, wrote on the company’s blog on Monday.

“The file provided by Voltage contains a couple thousand of IP addresses, which we will not be making public for obvious reasons. This very large volume has posed many challenges for us as we have tried to determine which of our customers could be affected and how to give them notice in the most efficient and timeliest manner possible. It will also likely pose challenges for the court dealing with the claims as it decides on how to deal with both the provision of notice of the claims to potential defendants and the processing of the actual claims of infringement. We are unable to find any similar case of this scale.”

Michael Geist, one of Canada’s leading tech law experts, notes that Canada’s new copyright law (known as C-11), went into force last month. To protect Canadians from being sued into oblivion—as has sometimes happened down here in the Lower 48—the new law distinguishes between commercial infringement (maximum liability of CAN$20,000 [US$20,270] per infringement) and noncommercial infringement (maximum liability of CAN$5,000 total).

“While CAN$5,000 is still very expensive for a downloaded movie, the law permits judges to award damages as low as CAN$100 in such cases,” he wrote in a recent column in the Toronto Star.

“In fact, the law instructs judges to consider ‘in the case of infringements for non-commercial purposes, the need for an award to be proportionate to the infringements, in consideration of the hardship the award may cause to the defendant, whether the infringement was for private purposes or not, and the impact of the infringements on the plaintiff.’”

I'm definitely watching the outcome of this, because I am a TekSavvy customer. On their website, they write: "Privacy Policy - Your business is your business and we don't share it with anyone. That, in short, is our privacy policy." Let's see how well they stick to their own policy, and if they don't, I guess I would just sue them back for breach of contract.

If any of these cases actually make it to court, I wonder what kind of damages the Canadian judges will award? I don't know if Canadian judges will like this kind of litigation.

I suspect they'll actually be of the $100 variety (I'm Canadian) in cases where there is no contest. It would be cheap for anyone charged to represent themself, plead guilty and accept the $100 damage award.

How long will these types of litigation persist if this were to happen? Would the trolling stop due to poor ROI?

As someone who works for an ISP good luck getting those thousands of IP's turned into actual names/addresses in a reasonable amount of time. Its fairly labor intensive and there is no guarantee that their even getting the right person(s). Only people making money are the lawyers as been said many times before.

I am a TekSavvy customer, although I have not downloaded any of the movies listed in the "Statement of Claim", thankfully. I'm surprised there are at least 2000 of us that HAVE downloaded any of the movies listed, as they are all quite terrible sounding, and I haven't heard of any of them.

Anyway, I have faith in my Country, and I doubt that anything substantial will come of this.

Also, The Hurt Locker is one of the most over-rated movies ever. It wasn't very good.

I'm definitely watching the outcome of this, because I am a TekSavvy customer. On their website, they write: "Privacy Policy - Your business is your business and we don't share it with anyone. That, in short, is our privacy policy." Let's see how well they stick to their own policy, and if they don't, I guess I would just sue them back for breach of contract.

Can't wait for Titanium Dragon to notice this and comment how we are all greedy thieves stealing great american art because we are jealous that we can't produce anything ourselves. /s

Well, Hobo with a Shotgun was infinitely more entertaining than anything else that came out of Grindhouse. Planet Terror felt too big budget, Death Proof got lost in Tarantino's endless hokey dialog, and the faux trailer to film Machete fell flat for me. The Canadian production of the faux trailer made film, Hobo with a Shotgun hit the spot.

Anyway, yes. We are drowning in content. There's so much out there, and the studios still haven't figured out how basic economics work. Scarcity promotes value. There is no scarcity when it comes to films and television. In fact, there's so much that the studios are devaluing their own content, and crying about piracy because they're too damned stupid to realize they've done it to themselves. I can't wait for indie studios to cut deals with theater owners to allow theaters to take more of a cut on tickets and totally cut out the big studio releases.

I'm definitely watching the outcome of this, because I am a TekSavvy customer. On their website, they write: "Privacy Policy - Your business is your business and we don't share it with anyone. That, in short, is our privacy policy." Let's see how well they stick to their own policy, and if they don't, I guess I would just sue them back for breach of contract.

They won't release the personal info unless they are court ordered to. If the court orders them to, well...there's not much they can do about that. Rogers or Bell don't have much of a privacy policy, if it's in their interest to release your info, they will.

When the big ISP's started throttling P2P, sending warning emails, jacking up prices for shrinking bandwidth limits, etc, etc the heavy downloaders jumped to smaller ISP's like TekSavvy to take advantage of their unlimited download plans. That's part of the crowd TekSavvy caters to . So I'm not surprised the studio targeted them for the lawsuits.

IP addresses are useless for identification purposes. Do they not know this?

But they're great for extorting "settlements."

Too true. *sigh*

We need a big case to go all the way and get a ruling stating that IP address CANNOT be used as a method to identify an individual before this stupid tactic goes away. All an IP does is identify a computer, or several computers if it is NAT'ed and even then, spoofing IP addresses is trivial.

ardent wrote:

I wonder what would happen if a judge let TekSavvy settle as a class for CAD 100 x users. Would that even cover the legal fees? It'd certainly throw the whole process into limbo in Canada.

A good general policy would be [lowest available price to buy movie legally] x users. They can only prove that an IP address has downloaded the movie, not that it has shared it, so this makes sense. If they want to get more damages because the IP address has allegedly shared it, then they should go after those other people that have downloaded it.

I'm definitely watching the outcome of this, because I am a TekSavvy customer. On their website, they write: "Privacy Policy - Your business is your business and we don't share it with anyone. That, in short, is our privacy policy." Let's see how well they stick to their own policy, and if they don't, I guess I would just sue them back for breach of contract.

The TekSavvy Companies may disclose personal information without knowledge or consent to a lawyer representing the TekSavvy Companies, to collect a debt, to comply with a subpoena, warrant or other court order, or as may be otherwise required by law.

Nearly all privacy policies have something like that in them, and even if they didn't I don't think you could sue someone for complying with a court order, regardless of what agreement they had with you.

That said, I wouldn't even be concerned. I'm guessing they're just going to send out their form letters asking for a lump sum and they won't sue. I doubt they'll want to test the limits of the new law and only walk away with a small sum.

Until the legal system settles on the fact that IP's are for routing (are even time-shared among users in a specific market/area) and can't be treated as a digital fingerprint too a specific user, I think the best method of defense for anyone caught in one of these drag nets is to buy said movie on DVD, have that notarized, and use it as your own super cheap method of legal defense, even asking that your name be removed from the case.

Another satisfied TekSavvy customer here. They have been one of the better ISP's and certainly head and shoulders above Bell and Rogers. So, I would trust them to keep their word. However, I will be watching this closely as well.

I'm definitely watching the outcome of this, because I am a TekSavvy customer. On their website, they write: "Privacy Policy - Your business is your business and we don't share it with anyone. That, in short, is our privacy policy." Let's see how well they stick to their own policy, and if they don't, I guess I would just sue them back for breach of contract.

As much as I disagree with the approach, it is likely that a large majority of IPs will point to the users that illegally downloaded the film. A fine of $100 dollars also seems like a reasonable fine. If they do get a warrant to unmask the owners of the IP address, as the judge I would probably just ask those accused if they want to just pay the $100 dollars and be done with it. Those who don't want to pay and would like to go to trial should also have the right to do so.

I am a TekSavvy customer, although I have not downloaded any of the movies listed in the "Statement of Claim", thankfully. I'm surprised there are at least 2000 of us that HAVE downloaded any of the movies listed, as they are all quite terrible sounding, and I haven't heard of any of them.

Anyway, I have faith in my Country, and I doubt that anything substantial will come of this.

Also, The Hurt Locker is one of the most over-rated movies ever. It wasn't very good.

Anyway, yes. We are drowning in content. There's so much out there, and the studios still haven't figured out how basic economics work. Scarcity promotes value. There is no scarcity when it comes to films and television. In fact, there's so much that the studios are devaluing their own content, and crying about piracy because they're too damned stupid to realize they've done it to themselves.

Similar situation with the Russian SF&F literature. Uniform set of badly written books, plus prices (with reluctance of publishers and authors to deal with the electronic versions), plus alternative entertainments (such as Samizdat, VKontakte (and another blogs and social networks), Youtube, online games, etc.).But of course print runs drop (up to fifteen hundred or less), and readers do not want to buy yet another book about yet another popadantets(*) only because Russians are we-e-e-eevil pirates (unlike Westerners who get in jail even if only think about copyright infringement).

(*) Derogatory term in Russian-speaking SF&F fandom, means Mary (Marty) Sue who got in the past or to an another world.

IP addresses are useless for identification purposes. Do they not know this?

Nope, they are very useful for identification purposes: they'll know that the offending party used your internet connection. Most of the time that's going to be you or someone in your household.

An IP address doesn't, however, prove that you are the one who downloaded anything. The copyright holder could get a court order to have your computers examined, but if they don't find anything, they'd have a more difficult time in bringing a case against you. However the burden of proof in a civil case is different from a criminal case, so that doesn't mean that you can't be convicted on IP evidence alone (e.g.: a person with a secure access point, and one which logs DHCP information, or translation tables... if your computer's Mac was the only one which connected to the AP during the period of the infringing uploads, it's harder to argue that it wasn't you).

I suspect the company involved is trying to test the new law in Canada.

I believe they're going to be dissappointed with the ROI in these (potential) cases. They may be looking for some headlines to further their cause, but I suspect they'll be disappointed there too, as there'll be no large awards as in the U.S..

This is going to take years in Canadian courts if the ISPs involved bother to fight the requests, plus they have the advantage of all the arguments already developed in the U.S..

Slow progress, small settlements, pitiful or likely negative ROI...I expect the studios to soon be complaining to the Canadian Gov. that the law is too weak and the limits too strict. Meanwhile the current gov. (who instituted this largely unpopular law) struggles to find votes to maintain their slim majority government. It might even be a good thing if a truly large number of these suits are brought, pissing off even more young voters...

That movie is one of the worst movies ever made. There is nothing good to say about that pile of garbage. Maybe I should sue them for theft of my money promising to make a good movie. That's false advertising, right?

Hope that the ISP goes down fighting trying to protect their customers because this is the epitome of the strong stepping on the weak.

(I know it's not false advertising, but I want my $8 back. That movie was utter shit. Why anyone gave it anything above 1 star is ludicrous. The score Ebert gave it made me seriously question his sanity. The praise he gives it is ridiculous. I respect him as a critic, but he got that one completely wrong.)